Luminous Beings: Sheev
by Star Tsar
Summary: In a reimagining of Palpatine's backstory, we explore Sheev's life as a twenty-two year old Naboo aristocrat struggling to balance his responsibilities as a nobleman with the search for spiritual enlightenment through ancient Sith magic and mysticism.
1. Prologue: Feeling

By the scintillating waterfalls of the lake Scymere, and images of the distant, cloud capped towers of his ancestral demesne reflected therein, sat Sheev Palpatine. Twenty-two standard years of age, and motionless as he lay ruminant in the yogic catalepsy once attainable by only the most venerable and enlightened sorcerer-priests of the Sith; and which only years ago seemed like the fantastic meanderings of an alien imagination. But such thoughts were far from Sheev's mind; or Sheev's mind was far from Sheev, as the gravity of his consciousness spun outward, beyond the persona through which he defined his perceptions, and unto a higher intelligence. From the manse of his aristocratic geniture in the east to the cradle of the Naboo lake country in the west, Sheev felt all the Force could feel.

Sheev felt everything. Like a sublime, musical euphony of heartbeats sending incalculable shock waves into an infinite ocean; like a quintillion beads of water on a spider's web extending in all directions, and each reflecting it all, into eternity. For a fleeting moment, Sheev lost himself in the beauty of it all; in the supremacy of the Force. He felt the devrons gliding over the sand under the lake, and he felt the animalculous bacteria in the sand kicked up onto the shells of the dwarf opees, and he felt the dwarf opees' neurons firing synapses in response to this, and he felt the molecules of which these neurons were composed, and the atoms that comprised the molecules, and the subatomic particles therein, and so on into infinity. And for all he felt, he knew at once, that all of these things, all of these perceptions, were only figments of a subtler, macrocosmic imagination; physical manifestations of the Force.

The anagogic energy that belied all existence; the quantum potential that contained all within itself. The empyrean light that fills all with the definition of itself, and the abyssal darkness that pervades all that necessitates definition. The Force, at once, all of and beyond all itself, and Sheev knows it, Sheev feels it-for in this moment, a moment that supersedes all other moments, Sheev is the Force, and the Force is Sheev.

Then, Sheev felt it all begin to slip away, or become muffled. The supraliminal elucidation began to recede, like a veil drawn over the sun, and he could feel his soul come crashing down into his body. Like lightning from heaven, Sheev was himself again. He felt the warmth of the morning sunrays creep through his flesh, and the dew clinging to the grass under his hands. He felt the gentle caress of the falling wind, and the tender cloying of his silken garment to his soft, white skin.

Sheev felt the bitter apricity of mortality. He drew his knees up to his chest, curled like a fetus against the moist earth, and wept.


	2. Egg

Sheev woke with a start, choking for air as blood rushed to his head from a fearfully pounding heart. In the passing of mere moments, though, the young scion of House Palpatine had regained his composure and sat up, glancing around the shore of the lake (now aglow with the light of the noonday sun). This began years ago, during Sheev's first benighted explorations in the arcane realm of Sith philosophy; violent panic attacks that struck him in his sleep, ripping him from his oneiric slumber and back into the misery of the waking world. During the first episodes of this illness, it seemed to him that his body was shutting down whenever he tried slipping into sleep, and so gripped with fear was Sheev that he only slept when overcome with exhaustion.

Now, though, it was only one of the many minor discomforts Sheev was made to suffer as he initiated himself further into the mysteries of Sith magic. Any fear he could not purge through will alone, as to the nature of these attacks, he allayed by remarking to himself that he'd soon attain the wisdom and power to vanquish whatever extraplanar parasite was assailing him through the Force (this archaic Sith allegory being his preference to describe such afflictions).

After one of these self reassurances, he rose to his feet and, adjusting the drape of his robe, began the short trek back to his family's compound.

Built in the post classical style four centuries before Sheev's birth, by his eleven-times-great maternal grandfather, the palatial manor house of the whilom powerful clan Palpatine was now an emotional ruin haunted by its last principal, Sheev, like a living ghost. He, and a handful of inherited servants obeisant to him only through a sense of duty and a fear of the unknown. (Besides a male cousin married off to some upstart house in the southern hemisphere,) Sheev was the last vestige of the Palpatine line of nobility, an inconvenient state of affairs which brought with it a host of responsibilities Sheev shirked in favor of his studies into the recondite and obscure knowledge of the Sith.

Vast swathes of land and mismanaged industries built thereon decayed in the hands of middle upper-class estate managers and financiers. The only living testament to the passing of Sheev's maternal progenitors, the race of noblemen and aristocrats that worked for hundreds of years to amass these riches, had all but sealed himself away in a vault of antique texts and artifacts; lost in his own bizarre and horrifying world of myth and mysticism.

Such thoughts were quickly dismissed by Sheev, who regarded his birthright and attendant duties as accidental to his destiny, and the ultimate destiny of all living things: to understand the great mystery. The philosophers and holy men of all intelligent species recognized this ultimate imperative of existence; even the painted shaman of the Gungans saw it. How could Sheev, now that he, too, had touched the Force, ever resign himself to the bleak life of a Naboo aristocrat, with all its vapidities?  
Sheev sauntered listlessly through the treeline that encircled his estate and onto the grounds proper. He knew, as soon as he'd step through the western gate and into the courtyard, a manservant would greet him and enquire as to his grass-stained garment. He knew this, not because any image flashed through his mind, nor because some attendant spirit had whispered it in his ear; he simply knew it would come to pass. Such intuition was one of the Force's many gifts.

Palpatine walked into the courtyard, through the western gate, and a manservant hurried to offer his master a greeting. Sheev, without breaking stride, doffed his sullied robe and tossed it in the man's direction (but otherwise ignoring him). As the confused servant plucked the garment from the stone walkway, Sheev glided up the steps to the eastern wing of the mansion and entered.

Through darkened corridors and up two flights of stairs, Sheev walked to his destination in the heart of the manor house. A great room which, after the demise of his immediate family, Sheev had converted to serve a threefold purpose: a library to house his vast catalogue of ancient Sith texts and various translations of them; a reliquary for the plethora of ancient Sith artifacts he had assembled with the aid of the black market; and his private bedchamber, that he may easily peruse and curate his collections. The room itself connected to two others; one of which was his father's old parlour (where Cosinga would entertain guests he considered his friends), which Sheev now used as a cloister and shrine to meditate on the nature of the Force, and which couldn't be accessed by any other room in the building. The other room was Sheev's luxurious and very private refresher.

Sheev, having arrived at his sanctuary, opened the door, entered, and locked himself in; to be alone in his perverse wonderland of Sith antiquity. He stepped over to an old but well-fabricated armchair (the only piece of personal furniture in the room aside from his bed) and sat languid in it.

After allowing himself a few moments of relaxation, Sheev turned his thoughts to the day's schedule (besides the reading and minor rituals he would perform every day). Then, something occurred to him. He reached for his neck and grabbed a kaadu-leather pouch hanging from a handmade necklace. He opened the pouch and, sitting up, examined its contents: a crimson crystal, rough hewn and from the bowels of Korriban, where it was ripped from the fossilised skull of a Massassi slave-warrior. Sheev ran his fingers over it, feeling its essence through the Force. It was becoming difficult to sense the crystal as being separate from himself, but it was not yet entirely attuned to him. He returned the crystal to its pouch and stood up.

Sheev examined a painting made by his own hand, created a year-or-so earlier, and framed. It depicted a simple scene from Sith mythology: Ikhot, the primordial father, stood on the right-hand side of his love, Sapok, the primordial mother. Betwixt them stood their only son, Asok-pa-Ikhorot, the deified entelechy of the Sith'ari (the god-king of the ancient Sith theocracy).

The Sith entertained many different cosmologies and cosmogenies, and Sheev entertained many ways of exegeting the hieroglyphs and ideograms that promulgated these theologies. Ultimately, though, all of these interpretations (and interpretations of interpretations) arrived at the same essential truths, if examined by one initiated into the mysteries of the Sith. For the purposes of Sheev's painting, though, Ikhot and Sapok were only personifications of the fundamental duality of the Force; which some cultures preferred to think of as male and female, or light and dark (as the jedi did), and so on. Asok-pa-Ikhorot, the Sith'ari, was the equilibrium attained through the harmony of these opposing forces, and so symbolized a microcosm of the universal Force.

All the gods of the complex Sith mandala of deities were only aspects of the Force, personified; fundamental ideas by which priests and philosophers sought to attain and explain the secrets of the great mystery, and tools with which wizards and sorcerers could affect manifold change in accordance with will. This was before the dark jedi (as modern jedi called them) arrived on Korriban and began perverting the ancient Sith teachings with their own.

"Sith'ari," muttered Sheev, almost unconsciously, as he tried to imagine his true self. After banishing the self-indulgent daydreams this led to, he walked into his private bathroom and closed the door behind him. He manipulated the control panel for the sanisteam shower and stepped away, waiting for the jets to calibrate. The manor was too old and Naboo was too far from the core to have sonic shower facilities readily available.

While the mechanisms of the sanisteam whirred and hummed, Sheev glimpsed himself in the mirror opposite, and this frightened him. Through a dead eyed glare he stared long at his reflection.

It was like looking at a stranger.

Not because (in the past couple years) he had exchanged his modest musculature and a healthy layer of fat for a nigh-emaciated frame of a body; nor because his once rosy flesh had become pallid with reclusion. After all, his Titian red hair, his steel blue eyes, and his boyish, epicene countenance all pointed to the fact that the man reflected in the mirror was still Sheev Palpatine. But the man looking at the man reflected in the mirror was not Sheev Palpatine. At least, not anymore.

No, this was another one of the Force's gifts.

Sheev heard the series of clicks that indicated the sanisteam was ready for use. He removed his spidersilk shorts and gingerly stepped inside the small chamber, closing the glass door behind him. As the currents of hot steam began swirling around his naked form, Sheev tried to empty his mind of all thoughts, to dispel the feeling looking in the mirror had given him, by focusing on the sensation of the steam licking at his skin. Within a few moments, it had begun to work.

Sheev felt nothing but the steam. Then, moments later, and alarmingly, he began to feel himself feeling the steam, then he felt himself feeling the feeling of feeling the steam. Within seconds, this spiralled into infinity, and Sheev's heart started racing. He felt the room swing about him as it would a pivot, and he choked on the breath in his throat. While his mind examined itself through an infinite hall of mirrors, his body was in the throes of a panic attack. Finally, at the precipice of ego death (as the jedi called it), it all came to an abrupt halt as Sheev felt overwhelmingly painful waves of electricity shoot down from his brain, into his spine and through every nerve in his body.

Sheev collapsed, convulsing as the sanisteam continued blasting his body with hot water vapor. He could feel every organ in his body working, and every cell in every organ, and only the pain of continued shocks down his spine distracted him from the horror of it.

Palpatine's mind raced for a solution, settling on the notion to appeal to a higher intelligence of the Force. Through the pain, he imagined Sapok, the mother of the Sith'ari. He pictured her gentle face, and her pristine red skin, and her beautiful clothing. Once her image was clear in his mind, he focused all his will on it, and shrieked, "Sapok! Mother!"

With those words, his thought was realized; in Sheev's mind, Sapok had become existent, reified in the imagination of the living Force. He saw pain in her eyes for her only son. He felt a mother's love radiating down unto him. He felt himself awash in her tears. Sheev cried out again, in agony, "Mother! Please! Help me!"

The electricity crashing through his spine and body abated at once, and Sheev went limp against the synthstone floor. Not long after the attack ended, the sanisteam clunked off and the glass door automatically swung open. Gathering his remaining strength, Sheev crawled hands-and-knees out of the bathroom and into his chambers. He laid himself sprawled and face down on the cool, dry carpet; heaving with every breath.

Ten minutes passed before Sheev found the power to lift himself from the floor and amble to his bed. Wrapping his body in the soft sheets, he imagined himself within a shell of the Force, protected from anymore violent episodes while he slept. This image was actualized, and he felt as though he were cradled in his mother's arms. Then, Sheev's thoughts dissolved into slumber.


	3. First Dream

You find yourself enshrouded in total darkness. You raise your hands and bow your head to see them, but you cannot. You are overwhelmed with longing. You feel the warmth of tears streaming down your face. You are lost.

A column of light appears afront your now visible body. As you look to see your red flesh habited in the raiment of a Kissai priest of the Sith, the column widens, and you recognize it to be an opening door. You walk solemnly to greet the world beyond the expanding portal. You cross the threshold and behold the glory of Korriban; her aching, carnelian welkin breathing above you, her fine dark sand beneath your feet, and the antediluvian architecture of the long-dead Sith now viewed in its prime, under the blazing white sun.

Then you realize that you've just stepped outside of a great Sith pyramid. The tomb of the Sith'ari. You look forward to see before you two great obelisks, on either side. On the right hand side, an obelisk fashioned from pure, white soapstone and inlaid with Sith holy symbols. On the left hand side, an obelisk of smooth, black obsidian, but identical to its sister pillar in every other way.

Another Kissai priest, your twin, appears standing opposite to you, on the other side of the plane created by the opposing obelisks. Darkness falls on his entire form, such that he could be your shadow, and soon the red sky above you also darkens; giving way to night.

The stars above the tenebrous desert begin to burn out, one-by-one, falling from the sky. Soon you are again overtaken by darkness; but as the last star dies, you find yourself levitating above the apex of the pyramid. Your body has taken on a bizarre luminescent quality, and it fills you with hope. Gradually, your body becomes more illuminated, until your entire form is veiled in pure, white energy.

You sense your body become the energy that surrounds it, and so cease to possess a physical form.

You are a pinprick of light amid an infinite darkness.


End file.
